The Mandalorian season 3 premiere: New quests and not a lot of thrills
The Disney Plus show is back, serving up a pretty slick space battle but lacking any real urgency
TV Reviews Mandalorian
The last time we saw the Mandalorian, he was saying a tearful goodbye to his young ward, Grogu, as he sent the little old-man-baby off to learn the ways of the Jedi with cartoon Luke Skywalker. Oh wait, no, that was the last time we saw The Mandalorian in italics. The last time we saw Din Djarin, the Mandalorian from The Mandalorian, he was taking over a spin-off show to tell important plot points for his own series: The short version is that Grogu decided to give up on Jedi school so he could learn the this-is-the-ways of Mandalore from his adoptive space-dad. Also, Din Djarin got a new spaceship, which strikes me as one of the weirder things they relegated to The Book Of Boba Fett.
But here we are, back with the Mandalorian on The Mandalorian, and he has a new quest that the Armorer helpfully lays out in case you missed the other show: In order to redeem himself for removing his helmet in front of various people last season, he must…hold on for some real sci-fi nonsense…bathe himself in the living waters beneath the mines of Mandalore, the home planet of the Mandalorians. The problem is that Mandalore was obliterated by the Empire (not literally, thankfully), but it’s apparently so inhospitable that everyone says it’s cursed and the Mandalorians—especially those in Din Djarin’s “cult,” the Children Of The Watch—refuse to return.
With the Armorer’s implied blessing for his new quest, Din Djarin goes about assembling a crack team of badasses who can help him survive on Mandalore. First stop? Nevarro, home of High Magistrate Greef Karga, who has gentrified the formerly wretched hive of scum and villainy and turned it into a paradise where vendors can hand each other different things and where wild Salacious B. Crumb’s can cackle at passersby in peace. (Wookiepedia tells me it’s called a Kowakian monkey-lizard.)
After refusing Karga’s offer to settle down and live off the land (Grogu, meanwhile, can’t stop spinning himself around in a chair, and he later uses the Force to steal some of Karga’s space-Skittles), Din and Karga go deal with some pirates who are hassling a droid at one of Nevarro’s many good schools. See, the school used to be a bar, and since Karga rebuilt the town using money he got from being a criminal, the pirates—working for a guy named Pirate King Gorian Shand—explain that they think they deserve to be served some drinks at this school.
Karga and Din execute the pirates, leaving one alive so he can go tell their boss that Nevarro is a good place and that bad people aren’t welcome (the only surprising thing about the fact that this doesn’t work is that it only takes 10 minutes or so before everyone realizes just how much it didn’t work). Din explains that he wants Karga to let him rebuild Taika Waititi’s IG-11 (last seen self-destructing to save the good guys in season one), because it’s the only droid he’ll trust to accompany him to Mandalore. But after they get him working, he reverts to his old programming and tries to kill Grogu.
Karga suggests taking IG-11 to a group of Babu Friks (Wookiepedia says they’re called Anzellans) who are experts in fixing droids, but they say it can’t be done without replacing IG-11’s memory circuit. Now, I am one of the few people in the world who was completely unimpressed by the charms of Babu Frik in The Rise Of Skywalker (that movie has done so much unforgivably stupid shit by the time he shows up), but seeing Mando hunched over in that tiny room while Grogu tries to play with the little guys was so delightful. Maybe it’s the Muppet-esque fun of watching two puppets interact with each other? Babu Frik is still overrated, though.
Anyway, Din Djarin immediately takes on the sidequest of getting a new memory circuit for IG-11, because god forbid he gets to the proverbial fireworks factory with any kind of urgency. But he gets ambushed by pirates when he tries to fly away from Nevarro. (Remember the pirates? I said they’d come back!) The space battle is pretty slick, showing Din Djarin’s new ship in action, and the way he keep popping out of nowhere to smoke these jerks is cool, but it’s all a trick to lead him right to the main ship of Pirate King Gorian Shard, who turns out to be a Swamp Thing. (Wookiepedia doesn’t say what that’s called, so let’s go with “Swamp Thing.”) He threatens Din Djarin; Din Djarin escapes; and that’s the last we’ll see of Captain Swamp Thing! (Just kidding, he’ll probably be back next week.)
With repairing IG-11 requiring more work than he expected, Din Djarin decides to reunite with another member of his merry band on the way and visits Bo-Katan. His former ally is now hanging out in a castle, and she has a bad attitude. It turns out that, since Din Djarin owns the Darksaber now and is the rightful ruler of all Mandalorians (or he would be, if not for the helmet thing), nobody is especially interested in supporting Team Bo-Katan anymore and all of her friends are now either dead or running around as mercenaries. She tells him that the living waters beneath the mines still exist, he just has to look under a “civic center” (which can’t possibly be as boring as it sounds), and then she says goodbye to him in a mean way and the episode…just kind of stops.
So the Mandalorian has a couple of things to do now before he can visit Mandalore’s famous civic center. None of this was extremely thrilling, and there’s no one exciting thing that sets up the rest of the season as a must-see Star Wars adventure, but The Mandalorian has always been fairly good at surprises. We’ll have to see if that’s still the case.
Stray observations
- Hello, I’m Sam Barsanti! I’ll be carrying you around in my little bag as we explore the galaxy/this season of The Mandalorian together.
- Something I was curious about going into this episode was whether or not we’d see some reason why Din Djarin’s story had to take up so much time in Boba Fett rather than saving it for the real show, and I don’t think there’s a satisfactory answer. I guess that if visiting Luke and getting the new ship had happened in this premiere, it would’ve left all of the somewhat uneventful setups to happen in episode two, so maybe now the rest of the season will be more propulsive?
- The opening sequence, in which the Armorer presents a kid with his first Mandalorian helmet, was cute as a fake out (they make you think it’s kid Din Djarin!), but seeing dozens of Mandalorians get completely trashed by a giant alligator turtle, when they’re supposed to be the best warriors in the history of the galaxy, was silly.
- Curious about those space whales Grogu saw while in hyperspace? They’re apparently called Purrgil (yes, I looked it up). I’m guessing they either connect to Din Djarin’s later comment about teaching Grogu to navigate the galaxy, or they’re just some fan service thing so the big Star Wars Rebels fans can point out a thing they know.
- Speaking of Grogu, if, at any point in these recaps, I mistakenly refer to him as “Rogu” (a different alien baby who was introduced in 2019, a year before Baby Yoda’s name was given as Grogu), I refuse to fix it. That’s my promise to you!
- When the droid smashes IG-11 with a bust of Karga, Din quips, “Now that’s using your head.” I’m in favor of him making Geralt Of Rivia-style dad jokes, but that still elicited an extremely sarcastic “har har har” from me.
- Din asks Karga about some of their old friends, including Cara Dune. Unfortunately for them, she died on the way back to her home planet like Poochie and will never be seen again. Oh well.
205 Comments
Weirdly racist joke with Karga acting like the Babu Friks speaking English with an accent makes them completely unintelligible. And no, putting a black guy in the role doesn’t make it better.So, obviously the real reason for the Armorer lecturing Mando about all the same stuff she already told him on Boba Fett is to catch up people who didn’t watch that show, but in full context she comes off as pointlessly cruel and pedantic, and together with Bo Katan calling Mando a fool for wanting to do the ritual, I’m really hoping that his journey this season involves starting to ask the question “Why exactly do I want these jerks to let me back into their club, again?”
“in full context she comes off as pointlessly cruel and pedantic”So no change then. The cult subplot, which was fine at first and then a bit interesting when Bo Katan showed up and made fun of them is now the dullest and dumbest part of this show.
100% the most boring and silly part. To make it worse, the idea of Mando and Grogu having their own two-person mini-cult was quite fun, especially since Grogu now has his tiny armour.
It’s absolutely the worst part of the show and while I’m planning to stick with it for now, I can only watch so many episodes dedicated to the Mandalorian cult before I check out.
re: Babu Friks… Mando literally didn’t understand what they were saying at first and asked if they spoke Huttese. The joke wasn’t that Karga acted like they were unintelligible, the joke was that he kept “translating” well after Mando started to understand. (and without the closed captioning on, I couldn’t understand what was being said at first either. With the accent and the weird syntax, I think they made it intentionally unintelligible at first just to set up the joke.)
It’s basically the same kind of humor as Han repeatedly tapping C3PO and telling him to ask more questions, then saying “Hurry up, I don’t have all day.”
the Anzellans (Babu Friks) were speaking an entirely different language at first; they switched to Basic (English) after Mando asked about Huttese. The joke was that yes, Greef kept “translating”. Also I’m not sure how it could be racist? The Anzellans look/speak like tiny Italian grandpas?
Yeah agreed. The joke is that Karga keeps translating even when the meaning of what the little Frik dudes are saying is very clear and obvious.
Is that a racist joke? Or is Greef the butt of the joke for being so dumb as to think speaking loudly would make any difference?
That’s more a joke making fun of racists I think, since most of the ones I’ve met have always seemed to think speaking English loudly will break through the Spanish/English barrier somehow.
The first sign that Mando was about to go off the cliff a bit was the appearance of Luke Skywalker flying in as a protagonist-ex-machina to handwave an entire season of character-building, alliance-strengthening, and solidarity by single-handedly solving all of the series’ problems in one fell swoop.While that finale was the lowest-viewed episode of the Mandalorian’s first two seasons, it was also the episode that fans attached to strongest because it gave them the thing they saw as a kid — Luke Skywalker with a lightsaber not learning any lessons until the last ten minutes of Return of the Jedi. Which also required Luke going back to the guy who didn’t learn any lessons.Mando’s return in Boba Fett was great, but the very next episode made it clear they had no idea what they were doing with the character when they just had him lie on a bench for an hour while they member berried us with Grogu slapstick.This premiere is the dread manifest. The first 8 minutes is an action sequence that just does a lazier version of the Krayt Dragon fight, slaps another protagonist-ex-machina on top except this time it’s Din, then it repeats exactly what we got in Mando 2.5’s first episode except this time they’re super-serious about it.And while it was a cool detour to see Karga’s place so chill and reconstructed, it just introduces and quickly dispatches a seemingly one-off villain with no identifiable traits, motives, or goals other than cool/gross character design. Then wraps it all up with Bo-Katan, who has seemingly been sitting on a throne alone in the middle of nowhere for the last year or so waiting just to give Din exposition.Meh.
This is only for discussion, and I fully respect your opinion. But I also disagree with a lot of it:1. “The first sign that Mando was about to go off the cliff a bit was the appearance of Luke Skywalker flying in as a protagonist-ex-machina to handwave an entire season of character-building, alliance-strengthening, and solidarity by single-handedly solving all of the series’ problems in one fell swoop.”Was it out of nowhere though? A lot of the season was built around contacting the Jedi for Grogu. Once he reached out, it seemed pretty clear that a Jedi would figure prominently in the endgame. And since most of the Jedi were gone, there were only a few it could be. Lots of people were predicting this outcome before the finale aired. And how does it undo character development because our heroes succeeded in contacting the Jedi-which was the point of their entire season 2 quest in the first place?2.How did it undo the lessons Luke learned at the end of Return to see him carving up a bunch of non-living evil droids who were about to kill people?3.I don’t see how an Episode of Book of Boba Fett that mainly focused on Grogu and his training “made it clear they had no idea what they were doing with the character” of the Madalorian. It is fine if we don’t like the episode (and I fell asleep watching it again recently, so I get it), but how does that show that they can no longer write the title character?4. I don’t think you can call it Deus Ex Machina when the title character of a series swoops into save the day. That is kind of his or her job, not a random, unexpected event. And we got a super serious recap of BOB 2.5 because for some reason they turned BOB into Madalorian and they had to catch everyone up. Which to me says less about this show and more about asking: “WTF happened with Book of Bobba Fett?”5.I agree with the review in thinking the pirates will probably return. I agree with you if they don’t, but there is a lot of time left to see them again and no indication that this will not happen. It was a bad look to see Bo Katan sulking, but she did tell us what happened in the interim, and it does fit with what we understand about the Dark Saber. Do you think the slow decay of her group was something we needed to see? I don’t. Whether you respond or not, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the show. It is cool that people can watch the same show and see it so differently, which is what makes these comments fun.
“single-handedly”Best Skywalker pun ever!
“Weirdly racist joke with Karga acting like the Babu Friks speaking English with an accent makes them completely unintelligible” As a brown son of immigrants who speaks three languages—Lolwhat? Jesus Christ, the 21st century was a mistake. Racist lmao they’re aliens. White people stop thinking poc are aliens in sci-fi challenge.
I honestly had no idea they were speaking english… I caught a word or two but thought they were just sprinkling in an english word here and there. I absolutely needed his translations. Don’t see how that’s racist.
*sigh* another “recap” instead of review.
Get used to it. Seems to be the case for every show this site reviews these days.
I’ve just read a review that says the premier is pretty slow and uneventful but also adds that the action ramps up big time by episode 2.My two cents: Grogu should be GONE. Maybe some brief appearances here and there. If he’s too cute and popular to be written out, I say have him show up in Ashoka’s series instead.
If that didn’t happen after the finale of season two, it’s not happening period. At the time, I thought it was pretty ballsy to write Grogu out of the show and was curious about how it’d adapt to being fully about Din Djarin and Mandalorians in general. I figured Grogu would show back up near the end of season 3 or sometime in season 4 after a decent sized time jump and a re-design of the character. Then when The Book of Boba Fett came around, I figured there was no way Grogu would show up.
In retrospect, it probably should have been no surprise at all that Disney wouldn’t walk away from their cash cow.
Yeah I was kinda disappointed when they brought him back in Boba Fett /Mandalorian 2.5. Season 3 should be Grogu free, not that I’m not going to watch the show because of it, but yeah, be better show!
Wow, that was one hell of an underwhelming season premiere.
I can’t tell if Babu Frik is something people actually like or if it’s something everyone is pretending to like to be funny.
I mean, fans of Rise of Skywalker exist, I think. The worlds big enough for actual Babu Frik fans.
I hated The Rise of Skywalker with a passion and very much liked Babu Frik, so there’s that too…
That does indeed work.
We could form a club, since Babu and the one mysterious character woman that knew Poe were the two things I found tolerable in that film, and I hate the rest of it with the fire of one thousand suns. No more. No less. ONE THOUSAND.
“Babu Frik? He’s one of my oldest friends” is a great 3PO line. We needed more of those in the newer movies and less “Terrible job, Sir!” and “This is such a drag”.
I think it’s something more like “oh, there’s that thing again” and moves on with their lives. I am glad it isn’t another droid, human or alien species we’ve already seen in that “droid-smith” role. At least the diminutive size leads to a more interesting looking set design with the other characters being forced to act within it’s confines.
The problem is, as dumb and annoying as he was, he was still the least dumb and annoying thing about that movie. Plus his name is fun to say, if you’re a kid and you want to sound like you’re swearing but your parents can’t yell at you for it
Babu Frik was a pinpoint of joy in the garbage fire that was Rise of Skywalker and I will brook no heresy against him.But these jokers were not Babu Frik. They were a producer going, “You like Babu Frik? How about all the Babu Friks!”Babu Frik is a crotchety old bodega owner who gives you a goofy nickname and some stale candy. That was the pure joy of Babu Frik, he connected with something real. These guys are… whatever.It’s like how Andor has a guy from the same alien race as Maz Kanata but that dude doesn’t talk like Maz Kanata. Maz Kanata is Maz Kanata. Babu Frik should just be Babu Frik and the other Babu Friks can be other people with their own personalities.
So….all beings that have four arms are members of the same race?
I liked Baba Frik in TROS, but I really didn’t want him/them? to become a thing.
I don’t care about Babu Frik at all. But seeing Mando looking like a giant sitting in their miniature shop was f*cking adorable.
I bet Babu Frik only exists because JJ Abrams needed to invent another character for his version of Star Wars, just like BB-8 in the ST made sure R2-D2’s role would be diminished so much he would no longer be the little droid that saved our heroes and the galaxy… For that, damn you, JJ Abrams!
1.I liked the opening episode way more than a C-Plus. I know some people are annoyed by it, but I have always dug the side quest/western wanderers of the week format of this show. I am very glad that in this universe there is room for both Mandalorian and Andor to exist, two shows to love for very different reasons.I agree this particular side quest lacked some urgency, but I think the main problem here is that the urgency was established on a different show-in Book of Boba Fett Episode 5. So much of this had to be catch up for stuff the rest of us already knew. Book of Boba Fett becoming a completely different show in the middle of its run is one of the most fascinating things that has happened in TV in years. Will we ever know the full story?2. I appreciate the well written review, but I disagree about the opening space alligator scene. I thought it was cool and fun. And I don’t really see a problem with something that huge and ornery being a problem even for an elite group of warriors. If there is a gripe, maybe it is that such a group would not hold their big ceremonies in a place where that attack would be possible. But it was worth it for the fun.3.No matter the purpose, once the “space whales” came on screen I immediately shouted: “Yay! Rebels!”Looking forward to next week!
Space alligators is ornery because they gots all them space teeth and no space toothbrush.
LOL. The Armorer should make some Oral-B out of Beskar for the big ceremonies……………
I think the space alligator scene could have been cool and fun if it was shot better. Instead, what we got was a bunch of Mandalorians basically just standing on the beach ineffectively shooting at the thing. Why were they even fighting it at all when they could have just retreated into the cave behind them? We already saw this a lot in Boba Fett where characters would stand around out in the open and the consequence is that the action scenes lack any kind of urgency.
Agreed with all of this. It was also very eary 90’s era Star Trek where any form of gun was utterly useless in doing anything compared to melee weapons where you’d have Chakotay shot in the shoulder and the most that would happen is he’d start limping a bit.
Yes their weapons and tactics seem better aimed at humanoids and they all could have run of flown away.
We will die defending our—- er, that nameless beach. This is the Way.
My interpretation of that scene was that it was meant to highlight how impractically dogmatic this sect of Mandalorians is—in a situation where any sensible person would just duck back to safety and let nature do its thing, these fanatics have to fight Godzilla with their wee blasters because *honour* or whatever.
haha that was my biggest problem with it too–wtf do you not scout just a bit for big scary alligator turtles?
seeing dozens of Mandalorians get completely trashed by a giant alligator turtle, when they’re supposed to be the best warriors in the history of the galaxy, was sillyI don’t see the logic in having semi-submerged rituals adjacent to a body of water that you know (they must do, right?) contains hundred-foot alligators. It’s not like this area has any spiritual significance to them – it’s not their home planet after all – if the water is such a key part of it, toss a kiddie pool in a cave and be done with it.
It seemed thematic: the Mandalorians don’t belong anywhere, and their rigid customs clash with a galaxy that has no need or want of them. Din comes in with his shiny ship to save them, and they still consider him an apostate for breaking his “no helmet off” rule.
Let’s go back to the article last week about whether or not “Andor” will make “The Mandalorian” look even worse.I think we can all agree that answer is a resounding Yes.This show is so unbelievably dull, meandering and mostly pointless. No urgency barely scratches the surface.The show has two modes: fetch quest and “save a village.” While this episode was mostly the former, at least it threw in a tiny whiff of the latter.There are just no stakes here at all or anything for the audience to care about. The whole “no helmet” rule or Din’s cult seems stupid to us an audience. We are given no reason to care about this arbitrary rule, that strikes us as silly.So why does the show invest so much time in it? Why does Mando himself even care anymore at this point? The title character is so poorly defined, laconic and monosyllabic that the show doesn’t even allow him the opportunity to tell us WHY this matters to him. And Pascal’s performance is so restrained he never seems to truly care. It’s as if he’s going through the motions because he has nothing better to do with his time.And then there are the Mandalorian politics, which again, we have no reason to care about whatsoever since the show makes zero effort to make those questions interesting or weighty.So, again, we just have Mando bumbling around doing very little of consequence, gathering objects.And when there is an action sequence, they’re over quickly and easily with no threat to the characters at all. Mando and Greef easily kill the pirates on the street. Mando easily defeats the pirate fighters in space. And, despite having “weapons locked”, easily escapes from the pirate mother ship with a literal press of a button.The show is such a….big ball of absolutely nothing.
Some of us like episodic Westerns
If only this show was that. The acting and the dialogue are beyond wooden. There is nothing interesting about the main character. Even the situation he stumbles into are trite, and poorly executed.
*In the first five minutes a bunch of Mandalorians fights a gigantic alligator turtle*Andor fanboys: This is boring, I want to see Mon Mothma on her couch talking about her bank account again
I like Andor (and Mandalorian!), but this made me laugh.
Right? What the hell with these reviews? I mean, everyone’s entitled to their opinions, of course, but as far as space westerns go this one has been pretty dang good. It’s all a bit goofy and fan service, of course, but that’s pretty much Star Wars in a nutshell at this point, isn’t it? (Dont get me wrong, I LOVED Andor but there is definitely room for both). I was giddy to see the space whales (as a Rebels fan yeah I know what they signify) and super happy to see the goofy dudes and literally the only good part of the final Star Wars movie. Teasing with the return of Taika was just icing on the cake. I’m going to bet good money this is like Ant-Man where the critics vs audience scores are going to be 40-50% apart (considering this is the second poor review of the show I’ve seen).
What’s the point of the comparison other than in the broadest terms: “these are both shows in a franchise”? Andor is like a 70s political thriller. Mando is a spaghetti western. Neither one “does” something to the other.
My issue with Mandolorian as space western is that all the mysticism around “the way” is frankly dumb. Boba Fett was a cool bounty hunter who wore armor for protection and a helmet to breathe / also for protection. The idea that he’s connected to some honor society that doesn’t permit showing your face is just silly. It would be fine if it were just a matter of many bounty hunters coming from the same planet since they’re trained like Spartans from birth or something.
But the show agrees with you… it turns out that Mandalorians *don’t* hide their faces forever and have these weird rituals. Only a minority cult do. And I don’t think Boba Fett has any connection to that kind of Mandalorian.
“The Force” would like a word with your disdain of “The Way” my friend.
The Force at least makes some sense within the context of SW. Meanwhile “We don’t take our helmets off in front of others. Ever.” “Why not?” “WE JUST DON’T GODDAMMIT!”…not so much.
Eh, maybe. My point was that in the Star Wars arena, ponderous intangible things are a thing.
Your criticisms are well stated (even where I don’t agree), and my recollection is you have not liked the show for quite a while-which is totally fine!But I was really annoyed that AV Club and other places were comparing this show to Andor and saying that Mandalorian pales in comparison. There is no comparison-the shows are completely different and trying to accomplish different things.Andor is a complex drama. The first Star Wars property maybe since Empire Strikes Back that shows the crushing weight of the Empire on the populace and the scars that weight leaves. I love it.Mandalorian is a weekly western, a Saturday morning serial, wanderers solving problem of the week. It is all atmosphere and vistas and character beats as our heroes wander from town to town. I love it.Some people DON’T love it-my twin brother is huge into Star Wars and he HATES this show (and also westerns in general). Which again-totally cool. But why would these shows be a big point of comparison? Other than being in the same vast universe and on Disney Plus, they have almost nothing in common. Including what they are trying to accomplish. I really like AV Club and the other sites this was being done on, and have nothing but respect for the writers of these pieces. But the comparisons I was reading online yesterday struck me as really lazy criticism.
It’s not simply that they’re different. Maybe the comparisons are unfair. Maybe they’re not. But Andor is a better series, period. Not because of its genre. It’s a better show for the kind of show it is than Mando is for the kind of show it is. You can have a “space western” that’s actually good. This show isn’t that. You can have a “space western” with vibrant characters and urgent storytelling and clever dialogue. This show has virtually none of that. There have been individual episodes that I’ve enjoyed, to be fair. But, over all, the show is unambitious and lazy and deeply simplistic. I was very worried about what the direction of the third season was going to be and, so far, it’s off to a singularly unimpressive start.
‘You can have a “space western” with vibrant characters and urgent storytelling and clever dialogue.’Firefly has entered the chat!
🙂
There is no comparison-the shows are completely different and trying to accomplish different things.But there are things they’re both trying to accomplish, which is to satisfy the needs of basic storytelling that all genres and types of fiction (with rare exception) try to do: Create characters who are relatable and compelling; have story beats that make sense; have good dialogue; have stakes that get you invested. It’s LQ’s opinion (and I share it) that Andor succeeded mightily at those things, and The Mandalorian pretty much consistently fails at them.
I am well aware that this is LQ’s opinion. He has clearly stated it here, and about past seasons as well.I know I was being unclear because I was raising it in response to his post, but I was talking more about the criticisms raised by review sites in the last few days-AV Club and others. Those criticisms basically boil down to: Andor was SOOOOO good. How will we ever watch another Star Wars show again?????”This happens in the gaming world too. People play Elden Ring and declare all other games ruined for them forever. And, just like here, I find those comparisons silly. I like Elden Ring-it will absolutely not impact the way I play my next platformer, or FPS or puzzle game because Elden Ring is its own thing. I am really glad it exists, but it absolutely does not ruin the rest of what is out there-nor would it be fairly compared to another kind of game.I disagree with the opinions you and LQ have about this show-although I appreciate reading them. But my point isn’t really about those criticisms-which people who don’t like the show have been leveling since it started. I don’t find the narrative that criticism sites are pushing that enjoying one very different show makes it oh so hard to enjoy an entirely different show in the same universe useful or compelling.I get the sense that you and others would not enjoy the Mandalorian whether Andor existed or not. But for those who enjoy apples-it is hard to think that we will suddenly hate them now that we know oranges exist,
Ok, I get your point. I think that “X was so good, how will I ever consume anything sub-X again?” is a conflation of a few different things:clickbait – Elden Ring is great but there are lots of other great games, and everyone knows this, so a professional writer saying this does not actually believe it and is just trying to drive traffic. (It might not be that writer’s fault directly, of course; they might have been ordered to write that by a higher-up.)
hyperbole – No need to take this seriously or even respond to it; this is just people expressing their strong feelings about how much they like Elden Ring. They’re obviously going to play other games.“X is great and every other instance in its category is awful, so how can I go back to that awful garbage now that I know that something great is possible” – The Andor/Mandalorian situation (assuming one accepts the premise, as I do, that the other live-action SW shows are garbage). This is, I think, reasonable; if every instance of a type has been lousy so far, and then a great one comes belong, it’s not unreasonable to say that you’re not interested in going back to the lousy garbage.The first is definitely stupid and intolerable. The second, well, that’s just people looking for validation or socialization, not suitable for taking seriously as a factual assertion. But the third seems reasonable; I was watching TM/BOBF/OWK because they’re live-action Star Wars (LASW) (and the only new LASW available for several years at this point)! But Andor made me realize* that I no longer felt it necessary to watch bad shows that were LASW just because they were LASW; they can be better and I can spend my time watching better things.*Not me really, I had decided to stop automatically watching LASW after OWK, and decided to only watch them if they weren’t incoherent garbage. We didn’t start watching Andor until episode 6 aired, specifically because that happened. But Andor proved that that decision was a good one.
Please take a star. I don’t agree with your premise about the Star Wars shows (although Obi-Wan was surprisingly bad, and book of Boba Fett turned into another show entirely), but your analysis is well written and I really enjoyed it. And I’m glad you found something to like in the streaming universe-Andor is really great.My problem with the articles I was reading was that I thought they were in your first category-more clickbait than anything else.
Yeah, I can definitely see that if an author is phrasing it as “how can I watch a different show” rather than “how can I watch garbage”, that is indeed nonsense. And despite my opinion on their quality differences, I can’t argue that Mando and Andor are tonally and generically different (tense, depressing dystopian thriller vs. flinty-eyed action western).
Grogu coo’d so Andor could brood.
Lemme have my fun Star Wars timez. We’re getting more sturm und drang from Cassian & Co in due time.
Dang you said what I was trying to say WAY better than I did. SPACE WHALES ROCK
Add this to the pile of thing Andor ruined: filming on the Volume as opposed to actual locations. God, this whole show has such a dull and ugly visual palette, even seeing those screenshots up there reminded me of how washed-out the whole thing looks.
Man you guys are just going to get more insufferable, eh
Go watch some Doctor Who and then revisit your assessment of the visuals.
Also, here in 2023, the big alligator monster in the beginning looked almost as green-screened as the Rancor, in 1983.
“The show has two modes: fetch quest and “save a village.””I’d add a third: hey, remember that character from another Star Wars thing?!!
ha. Too true. 🙂
True, but to be fair: That third thing is true of every single SW property before Andor. And even Andor was riffing on a movie that came before.
The biggest problem for The Mandalorian as I see it is that everything has to tie into both the Abramsverse and the Filoniverse, neither of which burden Andor much, because the former didn’t exist in its timeline yet, and the latter only dropped a few Easter eggs and one mercifully short-lived Clone Wars/Rebels character into Rogue One.As soon as I saw the Purrgil, I knew immediately that at some point we’re going to see either Thrawn or Ezra or maybe both on Mando. It’s just a matter of time. And then Jon Favreau’s worst instincts popped to the surface, turning IG-11 into The Terminator midway through the episode. And I sat there reflecting on how awesome I thought all that stuff was… before Andor, that is.It doesn’t help that what started out as the Star Wars take on The Man With No Name has turned into this weird commentary on single parenting and niche religion. We should be getting The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly right now, and instead we’re getting some bizarre mashup of Silver Spoons and Ben-Hur.
Ha. Does that mean Grogu is going to turn into a Trump-loving, murder-supporting POS when he grows up??
Not sure about that, but odds are that he could end up on a stage talking to an empty chair. “Goo ger doo woo boo, Skywalker?”
That was kinda of my take in the middle of season 2…. What started out as something that SHOULD turn into Good Bad and Ugly in space, has kind of turned into BJ and Bear given that the hook isn’t there SpaceGuy With No Name, but instead “what adorable thing will Grogu do.”
Yet, as per usual, here you are reading about the show and commenting on
it. For a production that is so “dull, meandering, and mostly
pointless”, it sure has quite the grasp on you. What are we at now?
Three plus years of you dutifully showing up in the comment section to
tell us how terrible this show is? At this point, it’s safe to say that
tells us a whole hell of a lot more about you than it does this show.
Cool.
I was late coming to this show – I didn’t watch S1 until after S2 was over, so it was hilarious watching S1 and reading all the comments on those episodes and reading LaurenceQ’s comments throughout that season about how this show was awful and boring and that it was going to bomb and nobody was going to like it. Even by the end of that season, when everyone knew how much of a success it was, he was still posting the same comments, somehow convinced that he would be able to change everyone else’s minds to agree with him.
The Mandalorian S3E1 had one of the goofiest looking alien I’ve seen in a while in Star Wars and that’s saying a lot. Pictures don’t do it justice. You have to see it moving and talking. The leader of the pirates looked like he was from Sesame Street or the Power Rangers. It felt so put of place. Especially after the serious tone of Andor. I let it slide though, It’s the goofy side of Star Wars that we’ve all seen before. It was just a little jarring when I first saw it, lol.
you’re still here complaining about mandolorian? JFC man, find a new hobby.
The Andor fanboys are going to get even more pretentious now
It’s hilarious to read his comments through all the S1 episodes – he was so convinced the show would bomb and that everyone would agree with him that it was bad.
“This show is so unbelievably dull, meandering and mostly pointless. No urgency barely scratches the surface.” But enough about Andor
Isn’t the “fetch quest of the week” kinda the point? It’s a simple show with a simple format.Ep1 was a particularly bad episode in my eyes though. Hopefully there is some better ones in store this season.
Where these shows really fall down for me is in the pacing. Watch the original movies: there’s no dead air, no wasted moments. Everything keeps moving, constantly: the use of wipes for scene changes made this very clear. But The Mandalorian is a languid show, it thinks that we want to spend ten minutes in a conversation, or watch characters slowly walking toward a destination. Or watch a character take a spaceship for a test-drive. Of course Book of Boba Fett was worse for this but geez.
If you hate this show, and always have, why bother coming into a review to comment?
People need to know why the thing they like is actually bad. I’m doing a public service.You’re welcome.
He decided from the first episode that he hated the show and that it was his purpose to change everyone else’s minds to agree with him.SPOILER: that didn’t work.
There are just no stakes here at all or anything for the audience to care about.The vibes were already bad when they walked back their most significant decision to separate Grogu and Mando. You could feel the Disney execs sweating at the prospect of losing a huge marketing asset.
Indeed. And, most hilariously, they didn’t even put that in the recap, so those people who didn’t watch Book of Boba Fett (those lucky devils!) had no clue what was going on!
CounterPoint: Andor is grim slog and everything is soooooooo dire and weighty and ponderous. Star Wars should at least be *fun*. Andor collapses under the burden of sniffing its own farts. Also, Spoiler alert: Dude dies in the movie.
I have to agree that I do not care about Mandalorian politics. Didn’t care in the CW show, don’t care now. Mando’s particular sect as well seems like an oppressive cult, and the tension should be if Mando is going to break free from it or stay under their indoctrination. Is the show trying to present that tension? I’m not sure.
It doesn’t seem to be. But we, the audience, instinctively know his dumb cult rules are dumb. Why should we care about them at all? And Mando doesn’t even seem to truly care, he’s just going through the motions.Maybe if the show gave him a reason to care, or let him voice his reasons for caring, we might be able to get on board. But he’s just as flatly taciturn as ever. So many amateurishly bad story telling decisions on this show it’s staggering.
My son asked me several times why Bo Katan can remove her helmet without major repercussions.
I thought that scene looked familiar. It’s actually a cool homage. Someone working on the series is a Ralph Bakshi fan.
I’d probably go C+ for this one as well; at some point even Din should harrumph over everything in his life requiring two roadtrips and a fight. Must make grocery shopping all sorts of hell.
My working theory is that this winds up in Din having to choose between wielding the Darksaber and carrying all that responsibility or sticking to his Freebird-ass life with the kid. In either way, I cannot imagine how much Disney Prince Din Djarin fanart has been amassed by people waiting to jump on the right hashtag.
I mean, Season 2 also did some of the “we’re doing side-quests whilst we gear up to Do The Thing” right at the very beginning, but basically from Episode 4 onwards DID THE THING very rapidly. And S2 was pretty fucking amazing.I’m okay letting the beginning of the season breathe to set us up and then we’ll get where we’re going and see how it was getting there…
And S2 was pretty fucking amazing.It also had some real stinkers. Even the ending of Season 2 was ruined with Luke Skywalker showing up to just erase the central conflict of the show.
You are more than welcome to share you opinion but let’s not pretend like said opinion is fact. As far as I can tell, the season 2 finale was universally loved. In fact, I just checked on imdb, and see that it is the highest rated episode in the entire series.
‘Universally.’ You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The continuing plot of S2 was Mando trying to contact the Jedi, so I’m continuously confused when people say that Luke showing up at the end of the season “ruined” the season and came out of nowhwere.
And S2 was pretty fucking amazing.I think S2 is a bit of a rorschach test for one’s tolerance for Clone Wars/Rebels lore considering half the S2 eps were functionally back door pilots for Clone Wars characters. I watched that show and enjoyed it, but I really do not give a shit about Bo Katan or Mandalore sectarianism.I’d much rather Mando skip right over all that and visit different locales each week. This show is starting to become MCU style homework because thus far in The Mandalorian, they haven’t given us much reason to care about any of these characters and their internecine squabbling.
In fairness, having never watched Clone Wars or Rebels, I felt like I was maybe missing a little — but in the course of the story, just knowing “these were Mandalorians from the CW series” and “I know who Ahsoka is” and seeing how they fit in (even only knowing Grand Admiral Thrawn from the OG novels) was fine…
As an isolated episode, I get why people aren’t exactly thrilled with it. It’s a lot of set-up mixed with action scenes, and the first action scene in particular felt way too long.But its an episode I think the show needed. It established a lot of important things (what’s going on with Navarro, the state of Bo-Katan’s Mandalorians, the state of Mandalore itself, the pirates that are likely to become recurring villains, the quest to restore IG-11…) that episodes down the line will be able to work with, as well as properly defining what the season’s going to be about (well, probably, at least. What we’re meant to view the season as being about).Are there other ways they could’ve done all that and also given us more of an actual, you know, main plot? Yeah, probably. But for a season premiere, sometimes leading off with a solid single instead of swinging for the fences is important. The foundation for the season’s been well established, lets see what they do with it.Sidenote: The pirates are fucking gorgeous. I’m a big fan of practical aliens for TV shows, CGI aliens are fun and all but they get more expensive every time they show up, and creating some great costumes and makeup to get the look of non-human characters right in Star Wars is something that’s been on the back-burner way too much over the last while. Create a good stable of strong alien makeup-and-costumes with customizable bits to help create different characters cheaply, and maybe we can stop having 99% of the galaxy be human in the shows.
Andor was amazing and I can’t wait for more of it, but this episode made my eyes so happy with all the diverse expressive aliens and droids. And the pirate fleet in the asteroid belt with the mining stations. A big crazy lived in galaxy.It’s accomplishment enough that Mandalorian gets so much performance from a puppet and a guy in full helmet. But they really show what’s possible for actors in alien prosthetics. And not just with their eyes, think of the actress who played the frog mother with the eggs.
The advantage of having these alien creations made for Mandalorian is also that they can get reused too.Like, in Season 2 of Andor, they want to toss in a character that’s not-human? They can just pull one off the rack instead of having to remake something from scratch. You could have a whole menagerie of costumes and prosthetics to add in to give scenes a greater visual diversity without breaking the budget.
While the asteroid battle was clearly an homage to ESB, holy shit it was well paced and well done. Also the sound editing sounded amazing in surround sound too.
Right there with you on this being an episode the series needed. Beyond resetting the board for the characters and story, this felt like Favreau and Famuyiwa reeling the show back in to its core concepts.And yeah, maybe more could have been done, but I really liked just seeing the show get back to basics after it had gone so heavy with lore and MCU creep — where every show/movie becomes an advertisement for yet another show/movie — in the second season.
The pirates were CGI? The end credits has several of them with artists performing the pirates. Motion capture characters?
I was alright with the pirates’ costuming until their Chia Pet leader showed up. And while I realize that Hondo Ohnaka set a high bar for likeable pirate leaders in Star Wars shows, this guy had basically no personality at all.
Speaking of Grogu, if, at any point in these recaps, I mistakenly refer to him as “Rogu” (a different alien baby who was introduced in 2019, a year before Baby Yoda’s name was given as Grogu), I refuse to fix it. That’s my promise to you!I choose to believe that Grogu was named after Rogu. They both love their blue stuff!
My mind immediately went to how Frank Oz’s Yoda voice is just Grover.
And Miss Piggy.
While certainly the same performer, Miss Piggy’s voice is not especially similar to Yoda’s.
Dee Bradley Baker who voices Rogu also voices a lot of characters in Star Wars media (including the frog family in Mandalorian Season 2).
ETA: Actually, Tech and Crosshair on The Bad Batch are basically just variations of his Klaus voice.
At this point, I’m surprised Dee Bradley Baker doesn’t voice Grogu. He voices a very similar character (Murf) on Star Trek: Prodigy.
I can’t stand Rogu. Give me more Principal Lewis!
I’m seeing some people online complaining about how short the episode was, which is something the show’s always been accused of, both in length and number of episodes. And my response has always been the same: would you rather it be like the Marvel Netflix shows, visibly struggling to stretch its story over a much greater running time than it can reasonably fill?
Why are those my only options?
Well lets hear your options then
Right? I think the Marvel Disney shows are too short by at least a couple of episodes.
It’s interesting that shows with ten episode seasons can still feel stretched (and I’m not saying I disagree). 24 episodes used to be typical, and shows could run for a decade or more. Were we more easily entertained then? Or is the writing that much worse now? Are we in a Gilded Age of television?
Almost all of TV in the 24 episode era were developed as “bottle episodes” with very little “campaign” storytelling.
but there was always something new to watch (except for summer reruns)
I miss the 24 episodes that ran from September to May and reruns all summer and the next season started again the next September. Now we get a season of 8-10 episodes and a 2-year wait until the next season unless it gets canceled and then you may get 3-6 seasons max with years in between.
I do too, sometimes, but I will not stand for filler episodes. A single episode of The Mandalorian probably costs as much as ten episodes of a network TV drama, and takes longer to put together. But yeah, eight episodes per season is definitely not enough.
of course, it just seems that if I do not like rewatching most content we run out of new content really quickly if you can watch 1/3 of a season in one evening.
Broadcast, cable, movies and streaming. Too much content for too little talent. You see people with very little experience getting jobs that they would get in the past. 10 minutes in a Rick and Morty writer’s room gets you a show runner gig.
I think the purrgil were there to kinda lead into Ezra and Thrawns return. But probably just some more fan service. The way you speak of Babu is blasphemy. That said I didn’t understand the Mandos getting destroyed by a giant crocodile either.
We know the Ahsoka show is going to be able Ahsoka and Sabine looking for Ezra. Sabine is Mandalorian. Maybe just maybe this is all going to tie together.
The opening sequence, in which the Armorer presents a kid with his first Mandalorian helmet, was cute as a fake out (they make you think it’s kid Din Djarin!), but seeing dozens of Mandalorians get completely trashed by a giant alligator turtle, when they’re supposed to be the best warriors in the history of the galaxy, was silly.The real fake out was me thinking it was a Grogu sized helmet when they were first making it.
Imagine Barsanti calling out someone for making bad jokes.
I don’t understand why Mandalore is so mysterious. I can get why the Mandalorians have superstitions about it. But it’s not like the planet’s location is a secret. Why can’t other people visit it and scavenge it for resources? Especially since beskar is so precious. Couldn’t someone just fly over and scan the planet?
Why can’t other people visit it and scavenge it for resources?They explain in this episode that they thought the planet was glassed and nothing was left. Or so, that’s what Mandalorians think happened. Couldn’t someone just fly over and scan the planet?That was my thought too. You’re telling me not one person bothered checking up on it?
Maybe it’s a long way away and a really boring flight or something?“Mandalore? Heard it was glassed or something. We could go see I guess, but…meh”
There’s some pretty silly stuff in the show but that is probably the silliest thing. The idea is that only The Tribe (Din’s clan) believe Mandalore is cursed. They weren’t even on Mandalore during the Empire’s purge. After the purge the Empire setup mining colonies on the planet to mine beskar and are making friggin’ coins out of it at this point. This all happened not long before the timeline of the show and was huge news that anyone with any access to the Star Wars equivalent of a TV news channel would know because it was a huge deal. The show even has characters like Gideon and Bo-Katan, who were there, basically saying as much to Din, but he still believes The Armorer’s nonsense. The only reason scavengers would currently avoid Mandalore is so they don’t tangle with the Empire. It’s a really weird choice to make the main character so bafflingly dumb. It would be one thing if the series started with Din being ignorant, because he was cloistered with The Tribe on Concordia, but then had his eyes opened to the truth when he got out into the wider galaxy. Instead he’s presented as a long time, very informed bounty hunter, that hops all over the galaxy, yet somehow hasn’t heard any of things that would be common knowledge at the time.
I’ve heard Mando described as a character that keeps discovering that he’s in Star Wars, and I believe it more and more.
I still enjoy this show and I don’t mind how bland it is compared to Andor, but it would be cool if we could have Star Wars be something more than this. It’s perfectly fine all-ages entertainment, but it’s a whole lot of budget being put to work to do… not a whole lot.And Favreau, bless him, cannot write anything remotely evocative of the high adventure/pulp fiction hodgepodge the original movies were. The show’s fun, it’s fine, but it’s _just_ fine.
I think when kids are starting to question things about this show (Why can’t he take off his helmet if Bo Katan can? How does he eat?”) then it’s time to push that big reset button. Same writers, same directors, same characters, very damn small Galaxy. It’s gonna backfire big time.
“That’s it? We waited two years for THAT?! That sucked!” – my kids
The Mandalorian S3E1 had one of the goofiest looking alien I’ve seen in a while in Star Wars and that’s saying a lot. Pictures don’t do it justice. You have to see it moving and talking. The leader of the pirates looked like he was from Sesame Street or the Power Rangers. It felt so put of place. Especially after the serious tone of Andor. I let it slide though, It’s the goofy side of Star Wars that we’ve all seen before. It was just a little jarring when I first saw it, lol.
hold on for some real sci-fi nonsense
*pushes up glasses*
Star Wars is science fantasy.
Plus, the whole magic water deal is clearly religious nonsense rather than sci-fi nonsense. Barsanti must not know any Baptists or Catholics.
Jesus christ, they really handed to barsanti? fuck right off.
This episode helped me realize how little I actually care about Mandalorians, Mandalore, or Mando’s quest for redemption. My hope is that this is just the first arc of the season, and hopefully by episode three(ish) we’ve moved onto something else.
I’m actually on the other side of that coin, in that, if you want to have and episodic Western adventure then just do that, but once you’ve introduced Bo-Katan, the Dark Saber, Gideon, etc. you have to actually do something with that instead. The show just can’t seem to figure out what it wants to be. Din is literally the “rightful” ruler of Mandalore right now, but he’s also a moron who believes in myths about Mandalore that literally everyone in the galaxy know are false.
This show is fucking derivative fan-service dreck. What a god awful waste of talent.
I think this episode does seat neatly at a C+ or B-. It was all table setting, which is odd since the series co-opted a third of Book of Boba Fett to do table setting. I appreciate that the arc of the season is made clear – get to Mandalore- and the first objective is clear- repair IG-11, even if that seems a bit ridiculous and undercuts the character. Slightly better than, “somehow, IG-11 returned,” I guess.Seems like we’ll pay a visit to Amy Sedaris soon, since she’s the one in Mando’s rolodex who would be most likely to know about obscure droid parts.
When Weathers told Mando that he had a droid specialist on his planet, I was sure they were going to reveal that Sedaris and her droids had moved here.
The Galaxy is indeed a very small place. And everyone runs into everyone else at one point or another. This show has the same secondary actors and the same directors every season, so we shouldn’t expect major changes in the narrative. Be different, I’m begging you.
Can we not make this a season where you hate-watch it? It’s by far the best view into the Star Wars Universe. Enjoy the ride.
Nah, try The Bad Batch. That’s a much better, and better written show.
That was fun. I can’t wait for the other half of the first episode next week!
I found the episode fun, and don’t mind a season premier basically setting up a bunch of pieces. I did roll my eyes at the Mandelorians attaching their explosives to the most clearly armored portion of the beast – I guess I’ll take that as a sign of the degredation of their warrior culture. lolIt seems pretty clear to me that The Book of Boba Fett was actually Season 2.5 of The Mandelorian, but worried that a bunch of episodes of side-story would be too confusing, so they instead went with the confusion of making it a spin-off and having the episodes where the stories rejoined one another a part of that. Maybe they did it for some hokey bookkeeping purposes. (“No, no, it’s a different show, so it gets it’s OWN tax credits!”)
Haven’t watched any SW since Mando S2 and reading reviews to gauge whether I want to get back into it and…they fucking undid the S2 finale in A DIFFERENT SHOW?? That’s absolutely wild. I get backdoor pilots and I get it being fun if some people from one show occasionally show up in the other, but was that show so bereft of character or stakes that they had to reunite the two protagonists of a different show in it? Like, why was the reunion not the S3 premiere or something? I don’t know why I’m so irrationally mad about this.
Yes, Boba Fett was such a waste that even the writers realized it and turned the last half into a season of The Mandalorian.
Boba Fett sort of lost the thread about halfway through and just let shit unravel everywhere after that. It was just sort of a mess, frankly. A 4-episode show or 2-part movie would have been plenty, maybe even too much for BF, and then have those weird Mandalorian 2.5 episodes as a movie to tide everyone over until season 3 makes way more sense to me. I literally just thought of that and now I wonder why they didn’t do it that way.
It’s episode 1. Why does their need to be “urgency”? Did Andor have urgency in its first few episodes? Fuck, no.
I hope he loses that ship and gets a Razorcrest or something, it looks so fucking dumb with the big playground bubble on it
But the bubble is there for Grogu to poke his head out and see what’s going on!
I picked up on a lot of “divorced dad running errands” energy this episode.“Hey kid, you wanna go to the hardware store?”“But first, we gotta stop by work and talk to my boss. You remember her right? She’s okay. Mostly.”“Alright now we gotta go to the repair shop.”“Last we gotta go see your mom. Yeah, she’s in a mood.”
I thought Andor fans loved non-thrilling Star Wars
ok but I need a cape and two cape droids.
So that pirate king was definitely Swamp Thing. We’re finally getting that sweet Star Wars/DC crossover event!
I was thinking Chia Head.
It was fine. The Mandalorian keeps the episodes short enough that it never really wears out its welcome in any particular episode. I don’t care about the helmet thing or Mandalore, but whatever. It’s kind of fun.
I mean, this is the best attitude right here. “Fuck it, it’s Star Wars, I’ll give it a go.”
The spectre of Andor is going to make this show suffer. I tried not to compare the two, but couldn’t help it. Didn’t help that Episode 1 was pretty pedestrian. Hopefully Dave Filoni’s episodes pop a bit more (think his first one is Ep4)
I’m actually fine with Mando’s story being small and personal this season. But yah, once he became someone kids wait in line to meet at Disneyland, there’s only so much more depth or complexity you can bring to the show.
This was a perfect opportunity to re-canonize the dreaded space pirate Gir Kybo Ren-Cha. And yet they didn’t. Points off, I say!
This felt like the worst of Supernatural and Doctor Who wrapped in Star Wars cos-play. Watching this after the new Bad Batch episode showed me how bad John Favreau can be as a director, which is funny because I love his earlier movies. Let’s see:- As a redditor pointed out on /r/starwars, Mando episodes follow the traditional video game story arch. You must go on a quest and that quest involves weird side quests. Mando needs a droid to return to Mandalore, so he tries to resurrect one that should be in a billion pieces. Let’s leave dead characters dead.- The callback to Terminator was actually fun, didn’t mind this at all. Same for the space whales, a call back to Rebels is always welcome.- Space pirates were the weakest part of the show. Be it the scooter gang or this, please stop with lame, mid-level villains. The galaxy is filled with real villains doing horrible things, but they are never in Mando.
– Bo Katan didn’t have the Dark Saber before and her followers still took her lead. WTF changed? This makes no sense. She’s a fighter, I don’t see her giving up. This ignores all her growth from Clone Wars and Rebels.
I agree with your first two points, and your final one, but as to your third point: Did you forget about Moff Gideon? Also, having Mando blow up some space pirates was fun and helped remind us that he can kick ass.
“You told us you were going to get the Darksaber from Gideon if we helped you get Gideon. Instead you’re telling us some Death Watch clown has it instead? That’s it. I quit.”
The Bad Batch is very good, ten times better than The Clone Wars.
So we see a giant battle with a massive croc monster and people on jetpacks and we’re all “Andor is so much better than this meandering nothing.”
Okay. Mandalorian really emphasizes how little spectacle Andor managed.
MAKES ANDOR LOOK BAD
Was there a helmet rule change from never take it off in front of living beings to never take it off ever? Did I miss something or was the change just for the plot?
This episode sure made it sound that way. Which is obviously preposterous. The rule, living being or not, was made up for the show to begin with, and was utterly silly from the start. The Clone Wars and Rebels dealt with everything everything Mandalorian and, obviously, even the most strident sects only put helmets on when they wanted that protection. The show invented Din’s clan’s wildly unfeasible rule, that you can’t take your helmet off in front of “living beings” and it’s just dumb. It certainly helps production though as much of the character on set is stand ins with Pascal doing voice overs.
We “saw” Mando early in S1 take off his helmet when he was eating – I think he was in the village that was being attacked by the 2-legged AT-AT. So I would assume Mandalorians take off their helmets to eat when they’re alone and that’s fine.
I did too but the language used in this episode seems to contradict that.
How does he eat without taking off the helmet? My son asked that. And why does Bo Katan takes her off all the time?
It seems like a change from season 1 to season 3 and Bo Katan is mainline and he is in a fundamentalist cult.
C+? You on crack son, this was great.If you’re the new reviewer, guess I’ll be avoiding AV’s reviews. Good to know.
I’ve generally been pretty favorable toward The Mandalorian and I even enjoyed this episode, but I think the show is missing a huge opportunity for some pretty easy character development by not forcing Djin to work with another droid that isn’t IG-11. Yes, that was the one droid he’s ever trusted, but it’s broken now. He’ll need to find another one.Also, Kuil is the one that repurposed IG-11 and died to help save Grogu. Where’s his statue?!
It appears that nobody hates Star Wars content more than Star Wars fans…
I liked looking at it. Lots of cool Star Wars things and that’s part of why I like Star Wars.Plot-wise… mostly terrible and, in particular, the “droid doesn’t remember who he is and now we must replace his memory” seems like the strangest choice of all time. It could basically be any other part that he needed.I feel like I missed something there.
There was a lot of talk in the past few weeks wondering how this premiere would handle Mando’s plot in The Book of Boba Fett – would there be an extended “Previously on The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett” recap? Because despite what they may want to believe, there are a lot of Mando viewers that did not watch TBOBF and have no idea what happened to Mando and Grogu there.It’s a weird choice to just ignore that show and not even try to explain how we went from the end of S2 (Mando and Grogu separated) to the start of S3 (Mando and Grogu back together, Mando has a new ship).
Am I the only one that was … bored by this episode? I understand that it’s the first episode of the season so it has to introduce the main plot of the season, but I just kept waiting for something important to happen and then I got the end credits.The Mandalorians vs. the space-alligator fight was fun, and a nice fakeout making you think this was a flashback to young-Mando, and the asteroid battle was ok, but the pirates felt like a minor threat at best (they were giving me Biff and his gang vibes from Back to the Future).Even though the overall plot for the entire season was introduced and started, it just felt like nothing really happened.
Nope, I was also bored and confused for much of it.
Way too much cuteness.
I miss season 1 when an entire plot with a beginning, middle, and end (usually culminating in a cool action sequence that is actually relevant to the plot would take place) would happen every episode. The plot of this episode, the big season premiere, was the mandolorian talks to three people about going to mandalore. This is the standard prestige TV thing of just slowly pushing a plot arc along over a whole series, but man they did it so right in the first season that it really sucks to go back to this. The action sequences all seemed tacked on like somebody realized they needed something besides Mando walking from place to place and having unproductive conversations. – the big alligator fight: the cave looked too small for the alligator, just have everyone run in there. You spend 5 minutes blasting the shit out of the thing and using all your fancy tools all for mando to just show up with a ship and shoot it once. Stupid.- pirate space battle: maybe this one will come back later? Seemed pointless though I liked the green guy. The thing that really sucks is that unlike most prestige TV and other SW shows, the pacing was good, things looked cool, I like a lot of the characters, and there were a few good Grogu gags but it wasn’t overdone. And it’s no Andor, but it looks pretty good and action was choreographed decently. Its wild that the CGI is finally at the point that George Lucas thought it was back in 97 or whatever. It’s just that the meat of the show fuckin sucks.
This was easily one of the most boring episodes of television I can remember watching. I’m going to keep watching regardless but wow, what an utter snooze of a premiere.
“Karga and Din execute the pirates, leaving one alive so he can go tell their boss that Nevarro is a good place and that bad people aren’t welcome” To be fair, Karga starts by dissarming the pirate leader, then all the others started shooting and Din and Karga shot back…. TLDR: It was Justified
Hey AV Club, can we get a new reviewer for this season? This one is broken.
Bo-Katan was the only interesting part of this lackluster premier. Her pissed-off princess act was at least entertaining compared to the dull as dishwater space pirates. For those who did not see Mandalorian 2.5 (aka Book of Boba Fett), this episode has to be kind of a let down as one minute, Din and Grogu are having a heartbreaking separation, and the next suddenly they’re back together and the only explantion that’s give is, “it’s a long story.” It is actually a long (and excellent) story, but you have to sit through 4 episodes of a failed spin-off to see it. The C+ grade was absolutely earned, and I say that as fan of this show.
Look I’m not going to disagree with a lot of your points here but for the love of God, spell “Wookiee” correctly
Book of Boba Fett was 1/3 flashback 1/3 mandalorian and barely 1/3 actual present story…they did him wrong. It is clear they should have saved the reunion for this show. Yes I still like this show, but it isn’t doing itself any favors with just terrible scenes like the pirates wanting to drink in the school…that was just…could have been written by a fifth grader.
I also hated Babu Frik, because I’m sure JJ Abrams came up with it, and seeing three of them was insufferable. But, yeah, ok, toys and merchandising opportunities.Cara Dunne shouldn’t have been mentioned at all. Two years have passed. Who cares?The pirate king has the same last name as Fennec Shand? WTF?! Why? And he looks like a character from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs.Those Mandalorians really thought they could defeat the alligator monster with those puny weapons? Oh, c’mon! Was it the first time they’d seen one of those?My son was, So they forgot they had to find that whatever to fix the killer droid?Can’t say it was a good episode. It was all over the place. Maybe stop ensuring the Galaxy is so small he keeps running into the same people over and over again…
Let’s face it, Din is a terrible Mandalorian. Beaten up on the regular, always caught by surprise. Has the Armorer not gotten around to making a scanner for his helmet? Was his sect previously the B Ark of phone sanitizers and hairdressers?
The weirdest thing about the Star Wars universe; everyone and their mother has access to interstellar-capable space ships, but not a single town ever has a paved street.
I’m waiting for him to go back to Mandalor and be shocked to discover they still have an operating Macy’s and a Hallmark store next to the Civic Center.